Adam Lanza
Adam Peter Lanza (April 22, 1992 - December 14, 2012) was the Italian-American perpetrator of the December 14, 2012, massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Adam was 6ft tall and weighed 112 pounds. In the shooting, he killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, in their home. At Sandy Hook Elementary, he killed 20 children (all ages 6-7), 6 adults (including the school principal), and injured at least 11 more before committing suicide. Currently, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting is the worst elementary school shooting in modern-American history and the fourth deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history overall. Biography Childhood Adam Lanza was born on April 22, 1992 of Italian descent. He didn’t speak until he was three years old, and always understood many more words than he could muster. He showed so much hypersensitivity to physical touch that tags had to be removed from his clothing. In pre-school and at Sandy Hook, where he was a pupil till the beginning of sixth grade, he sometimes smelled things that weren’t there and washed his hands excessively. Due to this, his doctor diagnosed him with Sensory Processing Disorder. Adam underwent speech therapy and occupational therapy in kindergarten as well as first grade. Still, photos show him looking enthusiastic and cheerful. According to Adam's father, Peter, Adam loved Sandy Hook Elementary. He also stated: "As he was growing older, how much he had liked being a little kid." Adam’s brother, Ryan, four years older and now a tax accountant in New York, used to joke about how close Peter and Adam were, as they’d spend hours playing with Legos in the basement and making up stories for the towns they built. Adam even created his own board games. "Always thinking differently," Peter said, "Just a normal little weird kid." Personality Even in an age when a child’s every irregularity is attributed to a syndrome, the idea of a "normal weird kid" seems reasonable enough, but there were early signs that Adam had significant problems. He struggled with basic emotions and received coaching from his mother Nancy. She became a stay-at-home mother after Adam was born. When he had to show feelings in a school play, Nancy wrote to a friend: "Adam has taken it very seriously, even practicing facial expressions in the mirror!" According to the state attorney’s report, when Adam was in fifth grade, he said that he "did not think highly of himself and believed that everyone else in the world deserved more than he did." That year, Adam and another boy wrote a story called "The Big Book of Granny" in which an old woman with a gun in her cane kills wantonly. Adam tried to sell copies of the book at school, but ended up getting in trouble. A couple of years later, according to the state’s attorney’s report, a teacher noted "disturbing violence" in his writing and described him as being "intelligent but not normal, with anti-social issues." Meanwhile, Peter and Nancy's marriage was starting to unravel. "I'd work ridiculous hours during the week and Nancy would take care of the kids," Peter stated, "Then, on the weekends, she'd do errands and I'd spend time with the kids." In 2001, Peter and Nancy separated; Adam was nine at the time. When a psychiatrist later asked him about it, he claimed that his parents were as irritating to each other as they were to him. Peter moved to Stamford, nearly an hour from Newtown, but still saw the boys every weekend. When Adam entered middle school, he proudly took Peter to see it. "And talk about talkative: man, that kid, you couldn't shut him up!" Peter said. Adam became fascinated with guns and with World War II, and showed an interest in joining the military. Despite this, he never talked about mass murder, nor was he violent at school; he seldom revealed his emotions albeit had a sharp sense of humor. When Peter took him to see Bill Cosby live, Adam laughed for an hour straight. One Christmas, Adam told his parents that he wanted to use his savings to "buy toys for needy children", to which Peter obliged and took him shopping. He also hated drugs and alcoholic beverages, and was a strict vegetarian as he hated animal cruelty. Teenage years When Adam began middle school at age 11, Peter and Nancy's worries increased. The structure of the school day changed; instead of sitting in one classroom, he had to move from room to room, to which Adam found the disruption punishing. Sensory overload affected his ability to concentrate; his mother xeroxed his textbooks in black and white because he found color graphics unbearable. He gave up playing the saxophone, stopped climbing trees, avoided eye contact, and developed a stiff, lumbering gait. He said that he hated birthdays and holidays, something which he had previously loved; special occasions unsettled his increasingly sclerotic orderliness. He had ‘episodes’, panic attacks that necessitated his mother's coming to school. The state attorney’s report says that on such occasions, Adam was "more likely to be victimized than to act in violence against another". On December 11, 2011, almost a year before the shooting, Adam got on the Anarchy radio, and promoted the story of Travis the chimp, a pet chimpanzee who attacked a 55-year old woman named Charla Nash, who was a friend of Travis's owner. As Nash was trying to get Travis back inside the house, she was unfortunately holding a Tickle-Me Elmo, one of Travis's favorite toys, to which Travis almost instantly attacked her, severely damaging her face. Sexuality Problems Officially it's believed that Adam was an asexual, but there have been rumors that Adam was obsessed with homosexual-pedophilia. However, most suggest he was an asexual with a fetish for homosexual-pedophilia. Adam also had a file of a 30 year old man, having sexual relations with a 10-year old boy. Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting On December 14, 2012, Lanza shot and killed his mother Nancy Lanza, aged 52, at their Newtown home with a .22-caliber Savage MK II-F bolt action rifle. Lanza then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School in his mother's 2009 black Honda Civic, killing 26 people with an Bushmaster XM-15 rifle before shooting himself in the back of the head with a Glock 20SF handgun. His brother Ryan was taken into custody for questioning. A seven-foot spreadsheet was found in his home detailing virtually every single mass murder and attempted mass murder in history. List of Victims Family Members *Nancy Lanza - September 6, 1960 (52 years) Teachers This is a list of educators who had died in the shootings. They were all females. The victim's names are followed by their date of birth, and their age at the time that they were killed. #Mary Sherlach, school psychologist - February 11, 1956 (56 years) #Anne Marie Murphy, teacher's aide - July 25, 1960 (52 years) #Dawn Hochsprung, principal - June 28, 1965 (47 years) #Lauren Rousseau, teacher - June 8, 1982 (30 years) #Rachel D'Avino, teacher's aide - July 17, 1983 (29 years) #Victoria Soto, teacher - November 4, 1985 (27 years) Students This is a list of students who had died in the shootings. In total, twenty students were killed. All of them were in first grade. Four of the students killed were seven years old, and the other sixteen victims were six years old. Eight of them were male, and the other twelve victims were female. The victims' names are followed by their date of birth, their age at the time that they were killed, and their gender. #Daniel Barden - September 27, 2005 (7 years) #Chase Kowalski - October 31, 2005 (7 years) #Grace McDonnell - November 4, 2005 (7 years) #Josephine Gay - December 11, 2005 (7 years) #Charlotte Bacon - February 22, 2006 (6 years) #Dylan Hockley - March 8, 2006 (6 years) #James Mattioli - March 22, 2006 (6 years) #Ana M. Marquez-Greene - April 4, 2006 (6 years) #Jack Pinto - May 6, 2006 (6 years) #Jessica Rekos - May 10, 2006 (6 years) #Emilie Parker - May 12, 2006 (6 years) #Catherine V. Hubbard - June 8, 2006 (6 years) #Jesse Lewis - June 30, 2006 (6 years) #Allison N. Wyatt - July 3, 2006 (6 years) #Madeline F. Hsu - July 10, 2006 (6 years) #Olivia Engel - July 18, 2006 (6 years) #Caroline Previdi - September 7, 2006 (6 years) #Benjamin Wheeler - September 12, 2006 (6 years) #Avielle Richman - October 17, 2006 (6 years) #Noah Pozner - November 20, 2006 (6 years) Conspiracy Theories * Not everyone believed that Adam Lanza had ever existed, as a conspiracy theorist movement called The Truthers claimed that he was an actor hired by governmental forces and that the shooting of the school never truly took place, saying that the perpetrator, the teachers, students and perpetrator's mother were "crisis actors" and were not killed during the tragedy. * Other conspiracy theories claimed that the massacre was, in fact, a government false flag operation aimed at fueling public demand for stricter gun control laws. Some conspiracy theories claim that the massacre was a government black operation aimed at population control, and others claim that Emilie Parker, one of the victims, was actually alive. ** Right-wing radio host Alex Jones was a huge proponent of this theory. In 2018, a group of parents of victims of the shooting filed a lawsuit against Jones for his remarks. * People also started to confirm that Adam actually committed suicide on December 13, 2012, a day before the shooting on December 14, 2012. * Some conspiracy theorists also said that one of the victims of Adam Lanza, Noah Pozner, was not killed in Sandy Hook, but him and his parents were killed in a middle school in Pakistan, and that they had proof because of a banner showing Noah's picture. Gallery Images AdamLanzaHD.jpg Art353-adam-lanza-300x0.jpg laznorg.jpg AdamLanzaOfficialNormalPhotography.jpg 140310 gma muller4 wg.jpg Adamlanzadeath.jpg|Example of the shooting being a hoax adam-lanza.jpg Trivia * Adam holds second place for killing the most people in a school behind Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter. * Adam lived a vegan lifestyle and was openly against dairy products. * Adam's favorite movies were Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971), Willard (1971), Crawlspace (1972), Haunts of the Very Rich (1972), Private Parts (1972), Folks at Red Wolf Inn (1972), Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972), The Baby (1973), Messiah of Evil (1973), Don't Look in the Basement (1973), The Killing Kind (1973), Bad Ronald (1974), Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1975), Driller Killer (1979), Don't Go in the House (1980), The Attic (1980), The Pit (1981), Night Warning (1983), Deadly Messages (1985), Link (1986), Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988), Bloody Wednesday (1988), Pin (1989), Beyond Dream's Door (1989), and Stalking Laura (1993). * During his high school years, Adam carried a briefcase instead of a backpack. * Adam would reportedly change his socks twenty times a day. * Adam played a variety of video games including World of Warcraft (which he enjoyed mostly for its atmosphere, and never managed to level any of his characters to level 60), Combat Arms, Skyrim (towards which he voiced his criticisms on the site Shocked Beyond Belief), Pokemon, Paper Mario, Kingdom Hearts, Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Earthbound, Super Mario, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Burning Sand, Cow Hunter, Phantasy Star Online, Doom, Luigi's Mansion, Team Fortress, Dynasty Warriors, Shin Megami Tensei, Vice City, Battlefield, Half Life, Metal Gear Solid, Dead Rising and, most notably, Dance Dance Revolution. * Two of his favorite bands were The Dickies and Flogging Molly. He was also fond of Japanese techno music and compiled a mix tape entitled Good Anime Mix. * According to his toxicology report (released with permission from his father), Lanza had no trace of drugs or alcohol in his system during the shooting. * At one point, Lanza took an interest in enlisting in the military when he turned eighteen. His mother, however, talked him out of doing so, explaining that his aversion would be an issue had Lanza been injured. * Adam Lanza was intrigued by mass murderers and created a 7 foot spreadsheet that featured over 400 killers. The spreadsheet was comprised of seventeen categories, the murders dating back to 1786 and continuing onward to 2010. Lanza's last update to the spreadsheet included information about English killer Derrick Bird. Category:2012 deaths Category:Gone too Soon Category:Deaths Category:Death by shooting